That is the red tape and the bureaucracy, the regulations that save lives at work and home that the free market Brexiteers want to get rid of.

Leaving would not restore fish to the sea or give our fishermen a bigger share of the catch.

Leaving would not cease the forces of war, famine and fortune that are causing one of the most sustained movements of human population that the planet has ever experienced.

Leaving would not make us more secure in a world where an action in one continent can have immediate repercussions in another.

Leaving is like pretending we can close the door to the rapidly changing world. And we know that cannot be done.

Boris Johnson was left floundering during the debate (Image: Getty)

So if you want to protect jobs and shape a future base on co-operation and common purpose, vote Remain.

Do not be comforted by polls that show Scotland voting roughly two thirds in favour of remaining in the EU. This is a UK-wide referendum. The country is evenly balanced, more split than it was in the Scottish referendum. Every single vote will count and this poll WILL go to the wire.

When it is not an invisible force for good – funding bridges, road and harbours or getting our industrial heartlands retrained and re-established – it is portrayed as a cumbersome, wasteful, burdensome beast.

But the EU can appeal to our heads. It is not as anti-democratic as it is painted.

We have changed Europe in the past when we have led on human rights and on the relationship with the rest of the world.

We can change it again, something we have no hope of if we are outside the negotiating room.

This is not a day for a protest vote on immigration, or against the British state, or to teach David Cameron and the political establishment a lesson. The only people who would cheer at that are our sworn enemies, President Putin and the vainglorious ultimate isolationist Donald Trump, who, like Nigel Farage, harks back to a past that never existed.

The arm of petty populists and far-right nationalists across Europe would be strengthened by Brexit.

Remember, the inheritors of the Nazis were only prevented from winning the Austrian presidency by a small margin. We need Europe, but by God, Europe needs us, too.

Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP (Image: Reuters)

As for railing against the political establishment, well, there will still be a political establishment after Brexit.

It would be Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the most chilling political double-act in Britain since Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebitt, with Farage lording it in the unelected Upper Chamber.

Brexit is only stage one for these people. Their plan, the only one that would make economic sense outside the EU, is for Britain to be the low cost, low tax, offshore service base for companies in a global marketplace.

That race to the bottom does not augur well for workers’ rights, wages or the future of our young people.

That is because it is the future of rich people that this ragtag army of nostalgia merchants and snake oil salesmen are interested in.

Don’t listen to them. Listen to the young, who are overwhelmingly in favour of an open Europe and whose best chances come from grasping and competing in an open, liberal world.

Listen to the very old, the generation who paid the highest price for peace in Europe. Don’t let the cornerstone of what they achieved be forgotten.

Listen to your own common sense. Listen to our plea not to leave your future in someone else’s hands and someone else’s pencilled cross on a ballot paper. Go out and vote for Remain.